National Art Education Association

Reinhardt: The Positive Power of Negational ThinkingAuthor(s): Burt WassermanSource: Art Education, Vol. 18, No. 9, Continuing Art Education for Adults (Dec., 1965), pp.33-35Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190661 .

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BURT WASSERMAN For the last several years now, the work of Ad Reinhardt has probably caused more consternation and provoked the sensibilities of more people interested in art than that of any other artist around. It is hard to be casual or neutral about Reinhardt's work. One tends to react with either total favor or total rejection. After looking at his paintings, some people have suggested that Reinhardt has simplified his forms so absolutely that he has reached a reductio ad absurdum. They suggest that his paintings, though possibly sincere, are devoid of thought and feeling; -that they add up to little more than blank, formalized rituals with no particular aesthetic or expressive significance. It is as though they are some sign of mourning at the graveside of modern art. Further, they maintain that the paintings become so tire- somely monotonous; -that "When you have seen one, you have seen them all." On the other hand, one may view Reinhardt's recent paintings as a logical step of development in a process of orderly evolution from his earlier work. His work also makes good sense in relation to the art of the 20th century at large. Viewed within such a context, Reinhardt's paintings are not obsolete as is so much contemporary art. Instead, his work stands out in front of the achievements of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Mondrian. When Reinhardt's work as a painter is examined in retrospect, from before 1940 to the present, one sees an unfolding progression. That progression begins with forms of "designed" geometric severity to loosely biomorphic shapes and then back again to simple, non-contrived rectangular elements. By contrast with these changes, two characteristics stand out continuously in his work across the years. First, each of his paintings appears to be a pure aesthetic totality. Thus they are divorced entirely from the lead weight of life experiences. Any reference to events, objects, or places has been entirely negated from Reinhardt's world of painted surfaces. On the other side of the canvas-in the world of people, places, things, and human affairs-Reinhardt is deeply committed to such fundamental human concerns as peace, justice, equality, and decency. However, he does not subscribe to the notion that making pictures of desperate or corrupted circum- stances or dehumanized people proves that he is sympathetic to humanity. Instead, he participates directly and actively in matters of social intercourse without exploiting his paintings for propaganda purposes. The second characteristic that stands out sharply in Reinhardt's art is a will to be at the very forefront of the avant-garde; a will to bring into being forms that will take the art of painting forward without perpetuating the past. Reinhardt's work is therefore a kind of "ultimate" of what painting today can be. His paintings are, without doubt, the most "far out" projection from the main body of art in this day and age that one is likely to meet. In his most recent work, Reinhardt has left behind the tricky, titillating, entertaining textures and sensuous colors of his former periods. It is as though he has pushed himself to reach beyond his former grasp. Reinhardt has refined the superficially pretty or aesthetically handsome characteristics of his earlier paintings. Instead he now favors a non-decorative approach that is free of novel brushwork and tantalizing patterns of shape-colors in unusual and off-beat design relationships. Reinhardt has made virtually non-verbalizable paintings. The more one talks about his work, the further removed one becomes from what takes place in one of his paintings. Because his canvases are not black, but rather very, very dark values or tones of reds and blues and other colors, no black and white reproduction can possibly suggest the radiant energies that glow and interact with each other upon the satin surface of his canvases. His colors are subtle, eloquent, elusive, and mysterious. They bring a mystical presence to one's ken of awareness. Reinhardt's work demands total attention and sustained concentration. The content of his work will not come through if one looks on in only some bland or lukewarm fashion. An intensity of feeling emanates from a Reinhardt painting when one seeks and brings to realization an intimate, internal rapport with the work completely free from external distractions. Clearly, not everyone is willing or able to do this; that is why few people receive much from Reinhardt's work. For a viewer, the heart of Reinhardt's art is not to be freely had. His work is not there lightly for the taking. Instead, one must approach his work with eyes entirely committed to the "seeing" process. If nothing else, Reinhardt's work is quite possibly the most painterly art one may see these days. His paintings absolutely refuse to lend themselves to possible adaptation as wall murals, textile designs, "lithographs," or anything else. What a wonderful relief Reinhardt's paintings are for eyes worn ragged from exposure to a world in which art seems so frequently destined to bear the burdens of extra-art expectations. Reinhardt's art is useless for external applications. It is only good for human consumption, internally, where the flesh ends and the spirit begins.

Dr. Burt Wasserman is an associate professor of art at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey.

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Reproduction of these paintings by Ad Reinhardt courtesy of the following institutions: Page 33: Untitled, 1940, oil on board. Gift of Jacob Ornstein, New York University Art Collection (detail, inverted). Photo by Charles Uht. 1. Abstraction, c. 1940, oil. A. E. Gallatin Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by A. J. Wyatt, Staff Photographer. 2. No. 2, 1951, water color on paper. F. M. Hall Collection, University of Nebraska. 3. No. 15, 1952, oil on canvas. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. 4. "Abstract Triptych, Blue," 1953, oil on canvas. The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio. 5. "Painting," 1953, oil on canvas. The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio.

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